By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show produced 979,000 viewers for TBS, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. The viewership count was down from the 1.046 million viewership total from last week.
Powell’s POV: Dynamite finished third in the 18-49 demo in Wednesday’s cable ratings with a 0.38 rating, down from last week’s 0.41 in the same demo. Monday’s WWE Raw finished with a 0.55 rating on USA Network. The NBA won Wednesday night by finishing first and second in the cable ratings with an ESPN doubleheader.
When you hype up a debut that nobody cares about, let jobbers go 10+ minutes with your supposed stars, push a bunch of 150lb midgets, and close the show with Mushmouth vs Darby (man have they cooled him off quickly) then you’re going to be the only company that can’t take advantage of the hype of WrestleMania upcoming.
Aew has already done what WrestleMania has not done and won’t do with 2 nights and that’s put on a show as good as revolution. He’ll wrestle kingdom 16 is better than WrestleMania. Dynamite was a great entertaining show. Something raw not smackdown has not been for years.
I’ve been watching wrestling for 30 years, and the psychology is just not there with Aew in most of their matches. They need to hire new experienced producers. Last nights episode was not good at all. And yes, I watch every week and ppv.
Q1 was the highest rated segment, as always. The drop from BBT to Q1 was about 200k and then the drop from Q1 to Q2 was another 120k. Q3 took them under 1 million and they stayed there all night. The positive is Andrade vs Darby actually bringing back 50k+ from Q7.
Lowest rated segment last night, Q7, was the Toni Storm debut. Guess she’ll be joining Ruby in catering soon.
Every match last night was won by a WWE wrestler over an AEW “original” except for Moxley beating ROH star Jay Lethal.